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Aug 24, 2017 14:31
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What a post to top a page, also what a peculiar looking word now I see it in isolation
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Aug 24, 2017 14:31
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Forktoss posted:
The concept that Time Lord names and language are mathematical expressions (I believe the ancient Gallifreyan visible in The Five Doctors is calculus inscribed onto stone) is such a cool concept that I wish it was canon.
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Aug 24, 2017 14:54
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I've watched through An Unearthly Child and The Daleks so far, and it's sort of refreshing how seriously the show took itself, even when it's dealing with things like goofy cave men. I like An Unearthly Child a lot. Once the Doctor frees Ian and has the conversation with Barbara about hope making companions of them, it feels like the show starts to gain ground. It's really kind of amazing it does all of that while in the middle of some tribal government coup. The acting is a little over the top, but it just kind of works. The Daleks is... interesting. The technical aspects of it are really impressive for what it is, even when you can see the seams and microphones. It's interesting they try to explain things like food and how the lock works (Susan says Ian can't get into the TARDIS because there are 22 ways the key can be inserted, and 21 of them will melt the lock around the key). Having the Doctor invent a story about the fluid link is a good way to keep us distrusting him a bit even after having him earn our trust in the first serial, but the whole "Let's leave Barbara behind" thing is a bit much. The Daleks themselves are a little more tactical and curious, keen to disable and capture, and it's only after they discover that they literally can't survive in a non-irradiated environment that they decide the Thals have to be wiped out. They also beg the Doctor to help them at the end. They're definitely villains and the Nazi analogue is still there, with their insistence that what they're doing isn't murder, it's extermination. It seems to be a kind of detached disdain rather than open fear or hatred like in later serials, though; they insist the outsiders must be horribly mutated, realize the two of them can't survive in the same environment, and decide to change the planet's environment to one that the Daleks can survive in. I'm not in love with the way the Doctor (by way of Ian) incites the Thals to rebellion. First of all, they're doing it for selfish reasons (they need the fluid link back). Secondly, as far as the Thals know, the Daleks can't leave their city and don't have Neutron Bombs, so their suggestion that they move on isn't totally unreasonable, nor would something that involves controlled raids to get access to some of the food resources until they could find a way to solve their agriculture problem. The Doctor's only solution is a full-on war, against people with superior technology, on a planet that is literally a nuclear wasteland because of the very war he's re-inciting. It gets better as the Doctor sort of learns to like the Thals, get invested in their civilization, find out what the Daleks are planning, and openly condemn them as cruel murderers. I'm not typically a fan of Terry Nation's work because it doesn't seem to age well, but the original Dalek serial is actually pretty decent. It introduces a relatively scary villain (giving them credit for how they would have been on a tinier screen, etc.), and keeps introducing us to the Doctor, giving us more information about his curious and experimental side (and letting us know that he's not a complete moral egoist). Susan gets some actual stuff to do besides scream, and I really like, when one of the Thals asks, "Do you always do what Ian says?" the way that Barbara responds "No. I don't." The First Doctor era is fun.
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Aug 24, 2017 14:56
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Apropos of nothing else, The Beginning DVD set is worth having if only for the commentaries featuring Verity Lambert talking very candidly about the people she didn't get on well with at the BBC in those days.
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Aug 24, 2017 15:31
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Bicyclops posted:I'm not in love with the way the Doctor (by way of Ian) incites the Thals to rebellion. First of all, they're doing it for selfish reasons (they need the fluid link back). Secondly, as far as the Thals know, the Daleks can't leave their city and don't have Neutron Bombs, so their suggestion that they move on isn't totally unreasonable, nor would something that involves controlled raids to get access to some of the food resources until they could find a way to solve their agriculture problem. The Doctor's only solution is a full-on war, against people with superior technology, on a planet that is literally a nuclear wasteland because of the very war he's re-inciting. This is my biggest problem with The Daleks. The Thals' non-aggression is presented as either naivety at best or cowardice at worst. The Doctor and Ian basically make chicken noises at them until they give up and agree to launch a guerrilla war against the genocidal robot monsters, and all other options are pooh-poohed as childish and ridiculous. That attitude is probably the source of a lot of the self-serious gun-toting of many other Nation stories, and I think that's one of the reasons a lot of them feel so dated now. It's also something that Survival 25 years later thoroughly repudiates with its "If we fight like animals, we die like animals!". Just like it has the Doctor pick up a rock and not smash it in
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Aug 24, 2017 15:44
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Forktoss posted:This is my biggest problem with The Daleks. The Thals' non-aggression is presented as either naivety at best or cowardice at worst. The Doctor and Ian basically make chicken noises at them until they give up and agree to launch a guerrilla war against the genocidal robot monsters, and all other options are pooh-poohed as childish and ridiculous. That attitude is probably the source of a lot of the self-serious gun-toting of many other Nation stories, and I think that's one of the reasons a lot of them feel so dated now. I feel like it's because the Second World War - and perhaps more to the point, the appeasement (real or imagined) of Germany in the 1930s - was very much a living memory at the time, certainly much more so than it is now. National service was only phased out in the year Doctor Who started airing, after all.
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Aug 24, 2017 16:47
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Wheat Loaf posted:I feel like it's because the Second World War - and perhaps more to the point, the appeasement (real or imagined) of Germany in the 1930s - was very much a living memory at the time, certainly much more so than it is now. Indeed, dealing with Nazis now is souring some people on non-violent responses to them. I can only imagine how it must've been if you'd fought a devastating war with them recently.
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Aug 24, 2017 17:00
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docbeard posted:Apropos of nothing else, The Beginning DVD set is worth having if only for the commentaries featuring Verity Lambert talking very candidly about the people she didn't get on well with at the BBC in those days. All of the commentary is really good on the set, but Verity Lambert and Waris Hussein in particular have a lot of interesting things to say. Waris more in the "Here's an amusing anecdote" way, Verity more in a palace intrigue way.
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Aug 24, 2017 17:14
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You basically have to have a very different kind of mindset when you look at some of 60s Who. To tip my toe into the other 60s and 70s TV for kids I enjoy, there are two very notable creators in Japan that are directly comparable here. Eiji Tsuburaya and Shotaro Ishinomori. Two men who helped shape what modern Japanese pop culture looks like to an insane degree, Tsuburaya more so but that's neither here nor there. Both of them made work dealing with stuff like the fall out of WWII, and both were very obviously affected by what had happened and how the world changed. The difference is in terms of how they presented it. Eiji Tsuburaya is basically the start of practical effects and tokustasu in Japan, period. His two most famous things are Godzilla and Ultraman and that should already let you know exactly how much of an impact this man had. In fact his impact was so great that Ishinomori was directly inspired by the man, more on that below. Tsuburaya was a special effects master who gave Godzilla life and ultimately started his own sci fi series Ultra Q, which would become Ultraman which would become UltraSeven, that points entirely to how he viewed the world. He had a very realistic, very measured view of how the world worked and why it was the way it was. No one was truly innocent, and even the best of intentions could have some nasty consequences. UltraSeven in particular tackled some really heavy scifi concepts for the time, including a straight up commentary on the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1967. His work often has a heavy note of tragedy to it, where things just go wrong despite the best of intentions. People can be perfectly good people, and still do terrible things without meaning to or realizing it. It's a very nuanced, very shades of grey outlook that gives his series some serious punch when he wants it to. More than once the heroes in UltraSeven are just flat out wrong, and do the wrong things, because no one is ever truly always right. While this crops up the most in UltraSeven, it's also prevalent in Ultraman, Ultra Q, and of course, Godzilla. Ishinomori is far less complex in that regard. His stories almost always have nebulous evil lurking behind it all, and even when he makes sharp commentary, it's never about people in general. People, as in the whole of humanity, are Good. The heroes are Good. The villains are Nazis, literally in some cases, and are pure evil. Ishinomori is the creator of a lot of things as well. Cyborg 009, Kamen Rider, Go Ranger, and is pretty much responsible for kick starting modern Tokusatsu that has not ended yet. He was mentored by the creator of Astroboy and has his roots back to the original manga from Japan. In Kamen Rider, the main villains are a group of Nazi aligned scientists named Shocker lead by a mysterious Great Leader who has his scientists convert people into cyborgs to better serve his ideals. Many of them are straight up former Nazis, like Colonel Zol, and Kamen Rider has to frequently deal with remnants of the evil of Germany and Imperial Japan. But it never really gets more nuanced than this. Not that it has to, mind you. The bad guys are bad guys and they're also fascists and Nazis who want to murder a poo poo ton of people and make slaves of the rest. In the manga for Kamen Rider, it's revealed that Shocker has been controlled by a machine that's realized society is advancing towards becoming more like itself regardless, and is just speeding up the process. Even with the destruction of Shocker, society could always become Shocker on its own. But there's that separation there. This is because of a fundamental difference between Tsuburaya and Ishinomori, that brings me back to Doctor Who as well. Ishinomori was a child when WWII happened. He grew up after WWII, after the atrocities were revealed, after the worst of it was, relatively, over. Tsuburaya was already an adult during WWII, and in fact was doing special effects for propaganda films for Japan during that period. You can see exactly where the split begins here. Because here's the thing. Tsuburaya didn't really have much of a choice in his profession during the war, and he also didn't have a choice in what happened AFTER it. When America rolled in, people like him were treated about as well as you can expect people who made propaganda films about the Japanese army destroying Pearl Harbor to be treated. He was basically black listed from working for years, and had just been brought onto Toho to make reconciliation pictures as a show of good faith and better relations. Ironically one such project would fall through before they could make it, leading to the producer to come up with the idea, instead, to create Godzilla in 1954, not even a decade after the atomic bombings. The rest is history there. How this applies to Doctor Who should be extremely obvious. I don't think I have to reach too far to guess at how WWII, and even more so the build up to WWII and its aftermath shaped a lot of people back in the day, especially in Britain. In fact, I would wager that it is a gigantic reason the Doctor is as anti authoritarian as he has always been. Some of it might even be, as mentioned above, a bit of retroactive self awareness and self loathing. Taken literally, it's Brits from the Future getting pissed off at Brits from the Past for not taking a stand against Germany sooner and putting an end to the whole mess before it began. It's entirely a fanciful thing, but that's why it's escapist fiction. Read in more modern light, it comes off extremely differently, but... Well that's why knowing your history is important. Context matters for stuff like this.
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Aug 24, 2017 17:46
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Context definitely matters and in the end, that's why I think it's still a good serial. I think some of the reason Nation's work doesn't age well is his duty-bound militarism and the way that he writes women (I may be over-estimating based on that play he wrote, but I think it's in a lot of his serials too). The Daleks is better than some of his stuff when it comes to the latter issue, and the war against the Daleks at least makes sense; it just could have used some tweaking in terms of our protagonists' motivations (Ian is pretty queasy about the whole thing at first, rightfully because he realizes they're probably sending a large group to die, just so they can get their transport working). It doesn't help that they only lose the fluid link in the first place because the Doctor lies to his entire party (including his granddaughter) and Ian takes it from him when he refuses to look for Barbara. The Doctor doesn't seem to care at all about collateral damage, and in fact, he only realizes what the Daleks actually have planned towards the end. Anyway, it's definitely worth watching, I think. Early Who is very good at making its audience uneasy. It doesn't even matter that the Daleks look and sound kind of silly, because there's so much in-fighting, uncertainty and danger that it's more about the situation than the monster.
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Aug 24, 2017 21:02
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Oh CBakes  https://twitter.com/germancompanion/status/900777981760720896
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Aug 24, 2017 21:38
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Unexpected annoucement from Big Finish: quote:Tales From New Earth is a brand new set of adventures exploring the worlds of Doctor Who, inspired by the Ninth and Tenth Doctors' adventures in the episodes The End of The World, New Earth, and Gridlock. Also a new Gallifrey out next year - dealing with the start of the Time War.
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Aug 25, 2017 01:26
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That's just a cover art reveal; they announced the set itself a few months ago. I wonder if Tennant himself is cameoing, or if they're just gonna do a narrator for him
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Aug 25, 2017 01:30
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jivjov posted:That's just a cover art reveal; they announced the set itself a few months ago. Ah, right, sorry, missed that announcement. Maybe a brief cameo, if he's been doing the next 10 boxset, maybe. Or just Nick Briggs. Again.
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Aug 25, 2017 01:35
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Pesky Splinter posted:Unexpected annoucement from Big Finish: But also... eh.
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Aug 25, 2017 01:46
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With all those well known New Earth traits like... applegrass! And... Was there a little shop in the hospital, maybe selling applegrass?
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Aug 25, 2017 02:02
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The_Doctor posted:But also... eh. Yeah, it's certainly...well I'm sure they'll do something with it. While it's nice they got returning actors to play near-enough the same parts, I'm finding it hard to care about the setting. 
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Aug 25, 2017 02:03
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There are some good Big Finish sidelines (Gallifrey, Jago & Lightfoot, Unbound), but on the whole, stuff like Dalek Wars and Cybermen and whatnot aren't great. Did they ever make that Winston Churchill series? I really have to get back to Big Finish at some point but my commute is so short these days.
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Aug 25, 2017 02:28
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Yeah, the first Winston box set came out like a year ago...and it was awesome. Hopefully the second is as good.
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Aug 25, 2017 02:43
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Wheat Loaf posted:She's 35. She's... she's only two years younger than me 
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Aug 25, 2017 03:34
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will the CD just be 70 mins of all the barrel scraping clips from their sounds effects library
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Aug 25, 2017 09:28
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Chokes McGee posted:She's... she's only two years younger than me Welcome to old age.
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Aug 25, 2017 09:29
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I've mentioned it before, but one of my absolute favorite bits in An Unearthly Child comes when the caveman antagonist is talking with a cavewoman, and he's struggling the best he can to articulate the notion of imagination/strategic thinking. Something about the way he describes it just really nails for me the idea of an early human slowly developing a deeper intelligence. Paraphrased, it's something like,"I can see what will happen if we do these things. Like a dream, but I see it with my woken eyes" and you know that it kind of freaks him out because he doesn't understand how the hell any of this works.
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Aug 25, 2017 10:02
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Jerusalem posted:I've mentioned it before, but one of my absolute favorite bits in An Unearthly Child comes when the caveman antagonist is talking with a cavewoman, and he's struggling the best he can to articulate the notion of imagination/strategic thinking. Something about the way he describes it just really nails for me the idea of an early human slowly developing a deeper intelligence. Paraphrased, it's something like,"I can see what will happen if we do these things. Like a dream, but I see it with my woken eyes" and you know that it kind of freaks him out because he doesn't understand how the hell any of this works. Yeah, it does a decent job of displaying exactly how their minds work. The first three serials are a pretty solid run. Mission the Unknown is a decent couple of bottle episodes that just lets the cast bounce off each other for a bit. Marco Polo kind of stinks, though. I still hope there's a copy of it kicking around in Ethiopia somewhere, but it's got all the racism of a 1960s historical and it's just kind of a snoozer. It's placement is interesting, because it deals with stuff like the crew being locked out of the TARDIS, getting low on water, and dealing with the environment of the mountain. The Doctor engaging in a trick in which he gambles for the TARDIS is interesting too. I like all of those ideas, but Tegana is a touch villain to sit with for seven episodes, and eventually the "Give me back my caravan, Marco Polo!" "No!" back-and-forth wears thin. It's always hard to tell with the repros, though. Maybe I'd like it better if I could actually watch it.
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Aug 25, 2017 13:32
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The duel in Part 7 of Marco Polo does the opposite of work in the reconstructions.
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Aug 25, 2017 16:22
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https://twitter.com/RattyBurvil/status/901162852131758080 Reminder, watch Legends of Tomorrow
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Aug 25, 2017 21:52
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Listen, I've only just finished season 2 of Arrow, I'll get to LoT eventually.
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Aug 25, 2017 23:49
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There was a joke in The Good Place in which a character says about a made-up TV show, "It ran on the BBC for 16 years. They did nearly 30 episodes!" and it made me think of the production problems this show faces.
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Aug 26, 2017 03:09
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Bicyclops posted:There was a joke in The Good Place in which a character says about a made-up TV show, "It ran on the BBC for 16 years. They did nearly 30 episodes!" and it made me think of the production problems this show faces. The joke about British shows having really short seasons, (which I presume was especially true in the past, but isn't really now) really tickles me for some reason. There was a Simpsons episode that made up 'one of Britain's longest-running shows' with seven episodes, and my favorite Clickhole article takes it and a few other British TV stereotypes to some weird extremes.
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Aug 26, 2017 03:18
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Also, I love that in The Keys of Marinus, Ian just kind of tools around in his Marco Polo outfit. Barbara and Susan have changed twice. I think he just really likes robes. I can't defend it at all, but I really enjoy it. It's like Terry Nation dug into his drawer of discarded, half-finished sci-fi scripts and said "gently caress it, let's make a full serial out of all of these."
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Aug 26, 2017 05:45
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Bicyclops posted:Also, I love that in The Keys of Marinus, Ian just kind of tools around in his Marco Polo outfit. Barbara and Susan have changed twice. I think he just really likes robes. I'm almost entirely certain that's exactly what happened. A script they had commissioned fell through, so they called up Terry Nation and asked him if he had anything they could use for a full story, and he basically gave them 3-4 story ideas that hadn't really been developed much past the planning stage.
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Aug 26, 2017 06:31
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Cleretic posted:The joke about British shows having really short seasons, (which I presume was especially true in the past, but isn't really now) really tickles me for some reason. There was a Simpsons episode that made up 'one of Britain's longest-running shows' with seven episodes, and my favorite Clickhole article takes it and a few other British TV stereotypes to some weird extremes. Even now, I think 12-13 episodes is unusually long for a scripted drama.
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Aug 26, 2017 12:38
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sherlock_episodes
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Aug 26, 2017 14:31
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Wheat Loaf posted:Even now, I think 12-13 episodes is unusually long for a scripted drama. It depends. Shows either run for like 6 episodes or just don't stop. Broadchurch had like 8 episodes a season, but Casualty is on basically every week.
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Aug 26, 2017 14:38
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What's most remarkable about Sherlock is they've only done one good episode
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Aug 26, 2017 14:46
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Gaz-L posted:It depends. Shows either run for like 6 episodes or just don't stop. Broadchurch had like 8 episodes a season, but Casualty is on basically every week. I suppose that's true. I feel like Casualty is the last big one of those continuing dramas left now, then you have Holby City (which is a spin-off from Casualty) and Silent Witness, and that's it. London's Burning ended 15 years ago and it's getting close to 10 years since Heartbeat and Taggart finished. I watched an interview David Harewood gave a while ago (I watched it when there was a lot of speculation about who would be the new Doctor, but I think it was older) in which he opined that all of those series coming to an end without replacements being commissioned was, in his view, a significant factor contributing to the reduced opportunities for BAME actors in the current TV landscape.
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Aug 26, 2017 14:54
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https://twitter.com/blogtorwho/status/901854351131648000 Captain John Hart returns for a Torchwood audio. No word on if "The Death of Captain Jack" is going to be an entry in the monthly series, or a special release like The Lives of Captain Jack was, though.
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Aug 27, 2017 18:27
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It's a weird feeling when you're watching Planet of the Giants and within seconds of one of the characters speaking, you identify him as R. K. Maroon from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
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Aug 28, 2017 01:20
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Bicyclops posted:It's a weird feeling when you're watching Planet of the Giants and within seconds of one of the characters speaking, you identify him as R. K. Maroon from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Isn't he also one of the American agents from Delta And The Bannermen?
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Aug 28, 2017 01:25
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